“I hardly need to stress what I have already intimated: the view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet. That in itself is not proof, of course. Expert opinion is, at the end of the day, still opinion. But why would you not want to know what experts have to say? When you make a dental appointment, do you want your dentist to be an expert or not? If you build a house, do you want a professional architect or your next-door neighbor to draw up the plans? One might be tempted to say that in the case of the historical Jesus it is different since, after all, we are just talking about history; experts have no more access to the past than anyone else. That, however, is simply not true. It may be the case that some of my students receive the bulk of their knowledge of the Middle Ages from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but is that really the best place to turn? So too millions of people have acquired their “knowledge” about early Christianity—about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the emperor Constantine, the Council of Nicaea—from Dan Brown, author of the aforementioned The Da Vinci Code. But at the end of the day, is that such a wise choice? Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and often Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic, not to mention the modern languages of scholarship (for example, German and French). And that is just for starters. Expertise requires years of patiently examining ancient texts and a thorough grounding in the history and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, both pagan and Jewish, knowledge of the history of the Christian church and the development of its social life and theology, and, well, lots of other things. It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure. Again, this is not a piece of evidence, but if nothing else, it should give one pause. In the field of biology, evolution may be “just” a theory (as some politicians painfully point out), but it is the theory subscribed to, for good reason, by every real scientist in every established university in the Western world.”

So if no professional historian denies the existence of Jesus why would anyone else?

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Thomas Brodie, the renowned biblical historian and New Testament expert and Director of the Dominican Biblical Centre, in affiliation with the University of Limerick, Ireland has just come out as a Jesus mythicist. He has a new book that explicitly argues that Jesus never historically existed: Thomas Brodie, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: A Memoir of a Discovery (published by the respected academic press Sheffield-Phoenix). This is a huge development. His conclusion: “it is already possible and necessary to draw a conclusion: it is that, bluntly, Jesus did not exist as a historical individual.”

At the same time, Philip Davies, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, England, published an article with the online journal The Bible and Interpretation, entitled “Did Jesus Exist?,” in response to Bart Ehrman’s book of the same title. Davies affirms that he believes in the historicity of Jesus. But he is alarmed by Ehrman’s rhetoric and his implied threats against the professions of anyone who would dare question the historicity of Jesus. Davies concludes in his article: “I don’t think, however, that in another 20 years there will be a consensus that Jesus did not exist, or even possibly didn’t exist, but a recognition that his existence is not entirely certain would nudge Jesus scholarship towards academic respectability.”

Philip Davies is a renowned scholar and (now emeritus) professor specializing in Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is a major turn of events for someone like him to admit that doubting the historicity of Jesus is respectable.

We also have Thompson & Verenna’s book “Is This Not The Carpenter”, questioning the historicity of Jesus, with academic contributors of some esteem. Neither Thompson nor Verenna are deniers of historicity, but historicity agnostics. They believe the question of the historicity of Jesus needs to be seriously examined and not dismissed as an exercise only for cranks. They also agree that historicity is more questionable than is usually claimed.

Combine this with Brodie’s defection to mythicism, alongside Thompson’s, and (like Thompson’s) the publicly professed “historicity agnosticism” of Arthur Droge, professor of early Christianity at UCSD, and Kurt Noll, associate professor of religion at Brandon University, and Ehrman’s argument that only amateurs and outsiders take the Jesus Myth theory seriously is now in the dust. There is still, certainly, a litany of crank and amateur mythicist nonsense. But there is also a serious case to be made, by serious and well-qualified scholars. And they need to be paid attention to, not dismissed and mistreated, their arguments straw manned or ignored.

Hey Jaycee, the guys you mention are just not on the cutting edge of the Academic historical Jesus discussion. No one in acadmia really takes thier positions seriously. I am not sure how to say it other than that.

Hey V Smith,
all I have read of Richard Carrier shows that while he talks the talk of academic respectability his assumption methods and conclusions show him to be a person who is outside academic respectability.
Thanks for reading my blog,
Hans

My upcoming book, Secret of the Savior: The Myth of the Messiah in Mark, examines the story of Jesus as a recapitulation of the history of salvation. Jesus serves as a symbol of salvation in Mark and is identified with a series of savior figures and salvation events. It is difficult to find a role for a specific person named Jesus to play.

This is a staggeringly shocking discussion. IF Jesus DID NOT exist then God’s redeeming work on the cross is false, then everything that Jesus, Paul and the apostles say and is recorded about the life and times of Christ and His teachings is a lie. This means Christianity is a false man-made religion and the bible which talks about truth is all but a bunch of lies as it could not attributed to God especially if the “truth” was uttered by Christ and recorded as such in the bible. Why? because if these people are right, Jesus as Christ never existed.

Sorry Ralph dragged you into this, but you may want to know that he has been stalking me on the internet; it is a little pathetic, but do an internet search for ‘Ralph Ellis’ and you’ll see enough to know that he’s not quite right (he thinks Jesus is King Arthur, for example).

As for whether or not I ‘pretend’ to be a scholar, you can ask any of my colleagues (Mark Goodacre, Bob Cargill, Philip Davies, James Crossley, etc…) how credible I am; I would trust their opinion over someone like Mr. Ellis, who argues in one self-published book that Jesus was the king of Edessa in and around 70 CE. But that is just me, you’re welcome to believe whatever you want.

Also, I would not be so quick to dismiss my co-edited collection of essays; it is the first academic publication through a credible academic series which raises the question of historicity. The list of scholars are quite well-known in the Academy–James Crossley & Mogens Muller especially (for scholars of the historical Jesus, they are quite cutting edge and Muller wrote the book-literally-on the ‘Son of Man’ and the development of Christology).